


The Curve of Joy

by Anonymous



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29950962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Ed Shames meets Thomas Peacock at Camp de Châlons in November 1944.
Relationships: Thomas Peacock/Edward Shames
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Heavy Artillery Rare Pair Exchange 2021





	The Curve of Joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arwen88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arwen88/gifts).



> I did a whole boatload of research for this fic, then decided to say "fuck it" and sent the boys antiquing instead.
> 
> A couple of quick notes, before I start: I recognize that gift-giving is not necessarily a traditional Hanukkah practice, but I thought that given the context of the fic it made some sense. Additionally, any French that Tom uses that's wrong is intentional—he doesn't speak much and he's not very good at it—whereas any French used by the unnamed shop proprietor that's wrong is just a casualty of Google translate and my own limited capacity for the language.
> 
> I hope you like it, Arwen!

Ed Shames was half asleep as the transport truck trundled along the pitted dirt road toward Camp de Châlons, kicking up mud from under its tires. The fall damp had settled in close over the French countryside, blanketing the sky in flat, steely grey and suffusing the air with a bite that seeped all the way to the bone. Ed cracked his knuckles against the chill and let his head loll back against the canvas siding, heaving a long, low sigh.

All around him, the ragged remains of 3d Platoon—and a handful of likewise worse for wear tagalongs from 2d—were reclining in similarly exhausted fashion. There was a gentle pressure against Ed’s knee and he tilted his head just enough to arch an eyebrow over at Art Youman, the baby-faced leader of 3d Platoon’s Third Squadron, who was sitting beside him.

“Ready for a nap?” Art smirked.

Ed snorted. “Ready for a nap,” he agreed. “And a shower. And a glass of whiskey the size of my head.”

“Hear, hear,” someone murmured, from a little further down the bench. Shifty, Ed thought, considering the twang—which was not unlike Ed’s own, given that they’d grown up on opposite ends of the same state—or maybe Popeye—also from Virginia—or another of the southern boys. At the moment, Ed couldn’t be bothered to turn and look.

“Figure we’ll finally get our leave?” Art asked, big brown eyes wide and hopeful. He was a nice kid and a competent soldier, for all that he was barely eighteen. He and Ed had become fast friends, as Art was one of the few who hadn’t given Ed guff when he was transferred in to replace First Lieutenants Brewer and Perkins as leader of E Company’s Third Platoon, the former having been shipped back to England with an injury and the latter booted out of the unit on charges of misconduct not long after. 

“Hope so,” Ed sighed. “Been too long since I spent a night out dancing with a pretty girl.”

“Krauts must’ve clocked you pretty good, there, Lieutenant,” teased a familiar tenor from across the aisle. Ed glanced over to find Frank Mellet, who fancied himself something of a comedian, grinning at him, teeth neat and white in his stubbled face. “Got you remembering shit that ain’t never happened.”

A muted chorus of chuckling spilled throughout the assemblage and Ed rolled his eyes.

“Jokes like that, it’s a wonder you ain’t on the radio.”

Mellet grinned even wider and they bantered back and forth, a few of the other guys tossing in a helpful aside here and there, until the transport came to a rumbling stop in the middle of the camp. They all shuffled out into the misty afternoon, stamping their boots and rubbing their arms against the cold. 

The enlisted men were waved in the direction of a block of rickety wooden buildings that might once have been used for storage, while Ed and the other junior officers were escorted to a proper barracks on the other side of the camp. The building was low and long, painted white like all the others, though the dusty coating had started to peel and curl away from the weatherbeaten blonde wood, courtesy the oppressive rain that was drizzling steadily down from the dreary sky.

There were a handful of guys already in attendance when Ed sauntered indoors, his trusty M1 and his meagre duffel of gear slung over his back. He recognised quite a few of them—Ron Speirs, from Dog Company, was sprawled out on his back on a cot with his feet dangling over the edge and a lit cigarette perched limply in his mouth; Harry Welsh, who’d recently been promoted to company X.O., was having a laugh with Warren Roush, who might have been leading 3d Platoon in Ed’s stead if he hadn’t been transferred to Able just before the jump—but there were a handful of faces missing and a few he didn’t yet know.

One in particular caught his eye, though Ed couldn’t have said why that was. The man was handsome enough, sure, but there were plenty of good looking fellows in the 506th, if the many swooning girls they always seemed to run across in the English pubs were any indication. He was maybe an inch or two shy of Ed in height and lean in a way that bordered on skinny. His hair was an inoffensive shade of midtone brunet and retained a slight wave despite the generous volume of pomade slicking it to one side of a crisp part, and his pale face was clean and smooth.

Ed reached up to palm his own jaw, still rough with two-day stubble, and made his way down the long aisle of cots, toward the mystery officer. He was folding what appeared to be spare uniform pieces and packing them into the trunk at the foot of a cot down at the end of the room, shoulders tight and slender hands moving in sharp, methodical strokes.

“Hey, Shimmy!” a familiar voice rang out at Ed’s back. “You made it!” 

A warm hand clapped itself over Ed’s shoulder and he turned to greet the smiling face of none other than Ernie Mann, an old buddy from Toccoa he’d lost track of sometime between jumping into Normandy and their most recent reclamation of Eindhoven. In the split second before Ed looked away, he caught the mystery officer raising his head at the commotion, pale eyes curious over his pink mouth.

“Hey, Ern!” Ed returned. Ernie was a riot of strawberry hair and freckles and fine, blond eyelashes over a wide, infectious grin. Ed reflected it back at him and threw one arm around Ernie’s shoulders, tugging him into a brief hug as he teased, “The hell’re you doing in the officers’ barracks? Get lost on the way to the mess?”

Ernie reached up to ostentatiously straighten his collar, chin jutting forward with pride as he explained, “Battlefield commission.” Sure enough, a gold 2d Lieutenant’s bar glittered at either point of the olive drab fabric.

“‘Bout damn time!” Ed grinned. Ernie ducked his head, flushing beneath his freckles, and Ed reached up to wrap a hand around his neck and give it a quick, fond shake. “Where’d they put you?”

“1st Platoon, assisting Tom Peacock,” Ernie said, puffing his reedy chest out. He hooked his thumb toward the other end of the room, where the slim brunet was still folding his clothes, and slung his other arm around Ed’s shoulders, tugging him forward into a lazy lope. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”

They crossed the room, sparing nods here and there for the men scattered therein. Beyond the rows of cots in varying states of occupancy and disarray, there was a low counter running the length of the far wall, interrupted only by a sink, a small, serviceable fireplace, and a modest cooking range.

Ed tipped his chin toward a door on the eastern wall. “Side entrance?”

“Hm?” Ernie looked over, following his gaze, and then chuffed a soft laugh. “Oh. No. Bathrooms, if you can believe it.”

“You’re having me on,” Ed accused, eyebrows jumping. 

Ernie’s face brightened even further and he shook his head. “Nope. They got showers and everything, though I’m reliably informed that it’s always cold and the water pressure leaves something to be desired.”

By the time they’d strolled up to the trim, tidy lieutenant, Ed was feeling fairly well gobsmacked, between the exhaustion and the unexpected companionship and amenities. The lieutenant was even sleeker up close, lithe and rosy-cheeked with his uniform arrayed to highlight the surprising breadth of his shoulders and the narrow taper of his waist. He looked like something out of one of those shirt ads that Ed’s sisters were always swooning over when they rifled through old issues of the Saturday Evening Post.

“Lieutenant,” Ernie nodded at the man—Tom Peacock, apparently—and dropped his arm from around Ed’s shoulders in favor of clapping him on the back, “this is my buddy, 1st Lieutenant Ed Shames. We were in Item together back at Toccoa, but these days he’s leading our 3d Platoon. Ed, this is 1st Lieutenant Tom Peacock.”

Peacock smiled. Even with his mouth closed, Ed could see it was a real dazzler, pulling dimples into the planes of his cheeks and curving his eyes into shimmering crescents. There was a bright smudge of coppery hazel in the left one, like somebody had daubed it on over the seastorm blue and forgotten to wipe it away. Ed had never seen anything like it before. He did his best not to stare, but wasn’t especially convinced of his success.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Peacock greeted, extending a hand.

Ed took it, sparing a half a second to note that Peacock’s skin was warm and soft despite the requisite gun calluses, before he shook it in a frazzled, jerky up-and-down that probably didn’t recommend him very well. By some measure of luck, his uncharacteristic awkwardness only seemed to make the edges of Peacock’s grin curl up higher.

“Lieutenant Peacock,” Ed managed. And then he dropped Peacock’s hand like it was a firebrand and forcibly wrenched his gaze away.

Peacock ducked his head, a little white flash of teeth showing as he turned away and produced an undershirt from the depths of his standard issue duffel. “Please, call me Tom,” he said, and set about folding with the same swift, sharp motions. 

“Ed.”

Peacock—or, Tom rather—flashed Ed a quick, shy smile over his shoulder. “Were you just transferred in?”

“Back in Diel,” Ed confirmed with a nod.

“Eindhoven,” Tom offered, low and companionable, like he was letting Ed in on some sort of secret. “Platoon leader took some shrapnel coming over the bridge at Van Abbe.”

Ed couldn’t help but grin back at him. There was something sweet and subtle in his expression that begged for a warm response. “Lucky you were there to step up.”

Tom huffed a soft, breathless sound that might have been a laugh and laid the well-ordered square of his undershirt down alongside the rest of his clothes.

“Lucky for me, anyway,” Ernie said, from just behind Ed’s shoulder. Ed nearly jumped. He’d forgotten for a second that there was anybody else around, which was something of a feat, considering the sheer number of displaced soldiers roaming the immediate vicinity.

Face hot, Ed craned his neck to peer about the room, which was rapidly filling with the low hum of chatter as more and more junior officers made their way across the camp to secure their lodgings. He cleared his throat and gestured to the cot beside Tom’s, which appeared empty of personal effects and had yet to see its precise military corners mussed.

“This rack taken?”

Tom shook his head with another friendly, close-mouthed smile. “All yours.”

“I’m just across,” Ernie added, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, where a duffel with his surname stenciled along one side was open and spilling wrinkled clothes out onto a cot caddy-corner to Tom’s and directly in line with Ed’s own.

“Better tidy that up, you don’t want to get gigged during inspection,” Tom warned, raising his eyebrows expectantly at Ernie. The latter scoffed, good natured, and rolled his eyes over a teasing grin that suggested this was far from the first time Tom had attempted to take him to task for the sloppy display.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’ll get to it.”

“I’ll write you up myself if you don’t.” Tom was still smiling, but there was a steeliness to his tone that promised he was being perfectly serious.

“Sure,” Ernie agreed, with a breezy wave of his hand. “In a minute. Hey, Tony!” He took off toward the door and a dazed, dark-haired young man hovering on the threshold, broad grin splitting his face.

Ed watched him go, shaking his head, and turned to find Tom smirking at him, one eyebrow raised.

“He always that enthusiastic?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ed snorted, nodding slow and exaggerated as he lifted the strap of his M1 over his head and propped the firearm gingerly against the foot of the cot. It was unloaded, of course, but you could never be too careful. “You’re really in for it.”

Tom grinned, pawing blindly through his bag as he said wryly, “Thanks for the advance notice.” He unearthed a blouse and shook it out, turning it over in his hands while he furrowed his brow and subjected it to close study. He stroked his thumb across a dark smudge on the fabric, made a soft noise of dissatisfaction, and tossed it into a small pile of castoff articles on the mattress that Ed hadn’t noticed before.

“Laundry?” Ed asked, shrugging his duffel off onto the thin mattress and wincing at the faint groan as it bounced and settled.

Tom nodded. “Figure it’s best to get it out of the way before all the rest of the boys are hauling theirs in for a wash. Early bird catches the worm, and all that.”

“Smart,” Ed agreed, reaching for the zipper of his bag. “Give me a minute to get mine together and I’ll walk over with you, if you’re up for the company. Gotta go right past it to get the armory, anyway, and I oughta drop my rifle off before somebody comes looking for it.”

Tom perked up at that, clearly surprised by the offer, though he attempted to wrestle his reaction down with an impressive measure of grace. “Sure,” he said, lifting one shoulder in an affectedly casual shrug. “Sounds good.”

He was peering down into his duffel and biting his lip when Ed snuck a glance over at him, the corners of his mouth curving up despite the pressure of his teeth, while his long lashes cast soft grey shadows down the planes of his face. The flush of pink in his cheeks had flooded a little brighter, and the taut line of his shoulders had relaxed to something looser and lazier. 

Ed’s stomach clenched with a sharp, warm throb.

No surprise there, he thought, distracted. It’d been awhile since he’d last eaten. Maybe he could talk Tom into swinging through the mess when they were finished with their errands.

* * *

A few days later, Ed was on his way back to the barracks, having just finished running his now thoroughly waterlogged platoon through a soggy afternoon of PT, when he came across none other than Tom Peacock, tucked up against a section of the low, white-washed stone fence ringing the compound. He was well-protected from the steady mist of rain by virtue of a few sprawling oak trees still clinging stubbornly to their fiery canopies. He had his garrison cap tucked into the pocket of his blouse and a book splayed open against his knees, the fingers of one slim hand holding it in place while the other cupped his chin.

“Hey,” Ed grinned, jogging over and reaching up to shove his sweat- and rain-soaked hair up off his forehead. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Tom startled at the sudden noise, but his wide eyes narrowed to pleased crescents over his smile when he saw that it was Ed approaching.

“Shirking your duties?” Ed asked, dropping down beside him. He leaned into the wall, tipping his head back against it, and arched a teasing eyebrow in Peacock’s direction.

“Oh, of course,” Tom drawled, smirking. They were both well aware that 1st Platoon had been at the top of the PT rotation and thus on the training field earlier that morning. He closed the book, leaving his thumb jammed between the pages to mark his place. “How else would I maintain my reputation as a consummate goldbrick?”

Ed snorted, nodding to the small, paperback volume. “Whatcha reading?”

“Hm?” Tom glanced down at his lap, eyebrows quirking like he was surprised to discover that there was anything in it. “Oh. Um. Nothing, really.”

Ed wasn’t sure he believed that. From what little he could see of the book, there were creases along the spine and small tears at the edges. The corners were curling up in a manner that suggested it had seen some years of use and battery. It didn’t look like the novels Ed had seen the other boys passing around, stamped with the Armed Services Edition circle and promising ‘THIS IS THE COMPLETE BOOK—NOT A DIGEST’ in bold sans serif, which meant that either Tom had purchased it secondhand, or it was one of his favorites, carried across the ocean from home. Considering that the 506th PIR hadn’t been blessed with an abundance of time to peruse local bookshops, Ed was leaning toward the latter. 

He was suddenly, desperately curious to know what the volume was.

“Any good?” he asked, trying not to sound too curious. Tom was friendly, but he erred toward reserve on most subjects and had a tendency to clam up about himself unless the topic of discussion was directly related to his capacity as a leader and a soldier. The last thing Ed wanted to do was spook him into silence.

“It’s all right,” Tom shrugged and ducked his head. He slipped his finger free of the pages and closed the book properly, tucking it facedown against his legs and crossing his arms over the top of it. His shoulders hunched forward just slightly, face pinking as if he were embarrassed.

Ed chewed on his lip for a second and risked pressing, “What’s it about?”

Tom blinked over at him, mouth pursed and brow furrowed, like Ed was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out. Eventually, he shrugged again and said, simply, “Love.”

“Ah,” Ed nodded, head lolling back. He let his grin curve slow, eyebrow rising into a smug, knowing arch. “You’re a romantic.”

Tom looked back down at his lap and snorted. His face was still flushed, hair coming loose from its neat coiff in sweet, curling tendrils as the damp weighed it down.

“Guess so.”

“Got a girl back home?”

Tom laughed outright at that—a sudden, startled burst of sound that he choked back just as it hit the open air. “No,” he said, lips twitching as he darted an amused glance over at Ed out of the corner of his eye, “nothing like that.”

It didn’t seem a particularly outlandish suggestion from where Ed was sitting—Tom was good-looking and capable, smart with a dry, subtle wit that it took some time to coax out—but he was relieved that at least Tom appeared to have relaxed again. He’d dropped his arms a little bit and straightened up somewhat, though his book remained abandoned in the bend of his waist.

“What about you? Is there anybody waiting on Ed Shames?”

Ed thought about Ida Aframe back in his hometown, sitting beside him in her crisp white nursing uniform with her glossy blonde curls pinned under her cap and politely agreeing to write him. He thought about her letters, delivered through V-Mail, always warm and fond, but not in any way that made Ed’s chest tight or his pulse race. He thought about Tom, here next to him, and the honest surprise in his amusement when Ed had asked him the same question.

“No,” he said, decisively. He frowned and corrected, “I mean, there’s my family, of course. My sisters write me sometimes, and my ma, but, no. Nobody like you’re asking.”

Tom made a subdued, thoughtful sound and let his legs fall open just far enough to knock his knee against Ed’s own, reaching down to catch his book before it slid down his thigh and into the dirt. “Plenty of opportunities to find love here in Europe.”

“Sure,” Ed agreed, leaning into the contact. “I’ll pencil it right in, between all the shooting and the shelling and the jumping out of planes.”

Tom laughed, soft, and flexed his thigh, lifting his knee a spare inch or so off of Ed’s and then pressing it back again, weight resting a little heavier. Ed’s bare skin was still damp and caught just slightly against the wool of Tom’s uniform slacks, which Ed felt was a fair tradeoff for the opportunity to leach some of Tom’s body heat. The other man put it off like a furnace, and now that the adrenaline and endorphins of good, healthy exercise were starting to fade, Ed was feeling the heavy chill where it rubbed against his bare legs and licked past the collar of his damp sweatshirt.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, listening to the distant cadence of another company’s platoon running through their PT exercises and the faint drizzle of rain as it collected in the gutters and slithered down to muddy the gravel lanes criss-crossing the camp.

“Thanksgiving dinner tonight,” Ed commented, after awhile.

Tom hummed his agreement, leaning back against the wall and arching an eyebrow in Ed’s direction. “Only a week and a half late.”

“By Army scheduling, that’s practically early.” Ed grinned and pushed himself to his feet. “Got anything else on today, or were you planning to spend all afternoon sitting in the mud?”

Tom cut him a wry, amused glance. “Nothing yet,” he said. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

“Thought I’d scrub up and head into town, see if I can’t find a few little tchotchkes to send home.” Given the abysmal overseas mailing system, the gifts would be late no matter what—might not even get there at all—and would probably make a poor substitute for Ed being there in the flesh every night to help light the candles and say the blessings, but he figured his family would appreciate the thought.

“Oh, right,” Tom nodded, with sudden understanding. “Hanukkah starts next week, doesn’t it?”

Ed blinked, surprised that not only had Tom remembered Ed was Jewish, but he knew the date of the next major Jewish holiday off the top of his head. Ed had mentioned his religious upbringing just once, in passing, during a conversation shortly after their arrival, and it hadn’t included a calendar of important dates. 

On the whole, the guys in the unit didn’t generally care to be reminded that Ed was a Jew. Only a handful were openly hostile when the subject came up, while the others mostly talked around it, but almost nobody—aside from the other Jews scattered throughout the 506th and the occasional outspoken anti-Semite—acknowledged it of their own accord.

“Yeah,” Ed said, voice running thin with shock. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“I, uh. I didn’t know you exchanged gifts for Hanukkah,” Tom admitted haltingly, pulling a face that was somewhere between apology and embarrassment at his own ignorance.

Ed shrugged. “We don’t, usually. Figure this year it might help ease the sting a little, y’know? My sisters’ll give me hell for missing it, either way, but I can probably buy myself a week or two of peace if I can hunt down something good.”

Tom nodded, sympathetic and amused, and Ed pressed on, “So, whaddya say, there, Tommy? You up to the task of keeping a fella company while he slogs through every curio shop in Mourmelons?”

“Sure,” Tom agreed, one corner of his mouth curling. “So long as he quits referring to himself in the third person.” He held up an expectant hand and Ed rolled his eyes and took it, hauling him to his feet. 

Tom wobbled right at first, Ed giving him a playful tug to keep him off-balance, but he got his feet back under him a second later. His long fingers were warm where they curled over Ed’s rough, wind-chilled skin. They stood there for a long second, grinning at each other like a couple of ne’er-do-well kids about to get up to some great mischief, until Ed realised what a strange picture it must make—the two of them sequestered in the riotous arch of the oaks overhead, holding hands.

On a whim he couldn’t explain and didn’t care to think about too closely, Ed squeezed Tom’s hand before he let it go. He saw Tom’s eyes widen, just a little, his face brightening, before Ed ducked his gaze away and strode off toward the barracks. Tom fell into step at his shoulder, and Ed did his best not to weave too far into the bright, sweet heat the other man was emanating as they picked their way through the mud.

* * *

The bathroom in the barracks was communal. There was a row of showerheads along the left wall, with half-height dividers between them, and a row of newly installed toilets on the right, replacing the French-style latrines that had been cut into the floor. There were two big trough sinks at the very back, porcelain chipped and shaded grey with use. On any given day, there might be a man or two doubled over either basin, brushing their teeth, or washing their faces, or suffering the ill effects of a night bellied-up to any of the makeshift bars that had cropped up in Mourmelons proper. Thankfully, the sinks were unattended this afternoon, and most of Ed’s platoon had already come and gone, so there wasn’t much of an audience to watch him hurry through his usual scrub-up routine.

When Ed emerged a few minutes later, in his undershirt and standard-issue brown boxers with his damp hair combed back but not yet secured with pomade, it was to discover Tom sitting at the end of his mattress. He wasn’t sure _why_ Tom had seen fit to position himself on Ed’s cot, when his own was barely three feet away, but he was less bothered by the unexpected invasion of what little personal space he’d managed to carve out than he probably ought to be. Tom had his legs tucked up underneath him and was resting his chin in his folded hands while he studied an array of battered playing cards he had laid out before him with solemn, silent focus.

“Solitaire?” Ed asked, as he approached. 

Tom hummed in confirmation and Ed meandered around to peer over his shoulder, skimming the neat columns of cards. After a moment’s inspection, he leaned in to tap on one of them, two off from the end, his bare arm brushing Tom’s clothed one. He grinned, straightening up again, while Tom sucked his teeth and swore.

“Can’t believe I didn’t see that,” he muttered, shaking his head and gathering the cards up into a pile, while Ed dug through his trunk for a clean pair of slacks and a fresh blouse.

Ed got dressed and Tom put the cards away. He tucked the deck into a sock, which he rolled into a pair with another in matching Army olive, and slipped the whole bundle discreetly down the corner of his trunk. He waited politely while Ed shrugged into his suspenders and laced up his boots, leaning his hips back against his own cot and watching with his arms crossed over his abdomen.

Ed arched an eyebrow at him, tugging the tongue of his left boot into place, and teased, “Enjoying the show?”

“Oh, sure,” Tom nodded with a small, wry smirk. “Well worth the price of admission.”

A short while later, primped and pressed as much as befitted a couple of dedicated representatives of the United States Army, they trooped out onto the wide road leading from Camp de Châlons to Mourmelons-le-Grand, heedless of the cresting drizzle or the persistent mist on the air.

“So,” Tom said, as they ambled over to the shoulder to get well out of the way of a passing truck, “you have sisters.”

“Two of them,” Ed agreed. “Anna and Simone.”

“Older or younger?”

“Older.” Ed wagged his eyebrows. “I’m the baby of the family.”

“I might’ve guessed,” Tom scoffed, amused. “Is it just the three of you?”

“Four, all told,” Ed corrected, counting out with his fingers as he spoke. “There’s me, Anna, Simmie, and then my older brother, George.”

“He enlisted?”

“Sort of,” Ed seesawed his hand in the air. “He was in the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Polytechnic, graduated a few years back as an engineering officer. Navy’s got him running a big refrigeration plant over in Norfolk.”

“Nice gig, if you can get it,” Tom offered, looking suitably impressed. He was loping along with his hands hitched half-way into his pockets, gaze tipping up toward the shifting grey sprawl of the sky every so often, wary of the looming storm. “I’m surprised you joined up with the 101st when you already had a legacy in the making over in sea dog country.”

Ed snorted and veered in close enough to catch his shoulder against Tom’s, quick and playful. “Probably be even more surprised if I told you I was in school to be a naval engineer before I shipped over, huh?”

Tom blinked, eyebrows jumping, and regarded Ed with open shock for a long second. Eventually, the corner of his mouth curled up and he laughed, “Well, you’re not wrong. That _is_ a surprise.” He frowned, brow wrinkling. “With a pedigree like that, how’d you end up in the Airborne?”

Ed shrugged. “Fella’s gotta make his own way, right?”

“Safer ways to accomplish that than jumping out of airplanes.”

“If that ain’t the pot calling the kettle black!” Ed protested with a grin. He wagged a finger at Tom and asked, “Need I remind you that you’re over here jumping out of airplanes right along with me? What’s that say about you?”

“I don’t know.” Tom shook his head and flicked his two-tone gaze up toward the sky. “That I’m crazy, probably.”

“Yeah,” Ed chuckled. “You, me, and the ten thousand other sorry sons of bitches in this division.” He was quiet for a moment, considering the man next to him. “Y’know what I think?”

Tom arched an eyebrow at him.

“I think you _like_ jumping out of airplanes, at least a little bit,” Ed informed him, low and smug. “I think that polite, particular Thomas Peacock has a secret taste for adventure hidden somewhere under those perfectly pleated service greens.” He folded his arms behind his back and lifted his chin as he strode along, the very picture of confidence.

“That’s an awfully generous assumption on your part,” Tom demurred with a bashful little grin. His face was pinking up in that sweet, soft way that made Ed’s stomach burble and clench. He still wasn’t quite sure what the feeling was, but he knew that he liked it. 

Tom was silent for a few moments and then put his head to one side and asked, “That what you’re in it for, then? Adventure? Prestige?”

Ed shrugged, considering. “Maybe a little,” he allowed. “Mostly I just wanted to get over here and help, y’know? I’d been reading about it in the papers, everything Hitler was doing, and I’ve always wanted to be in the military. I knew I’d be enlisting at some point, didn’t matter what branch, and then when the Japs hit Pearl Harbor - ” He trailed off. “Just seemed like the time had come.”

Tom nodded. After another few minutes of peaceful ambling, Ed leaned his arm out and nudged their elbows together.

“I ever tell you I tried to join up in Canada first?”

“What?” Tom frowned. “No. Really?”

“Really,” Ed confirmed, with a rueful little shake of his head. “Me and my buddies were down at the Steam Engineering School in Norfolk, and we heard from some of the other guys that the Royal Canadian Air Force was recruiting officer cadets to become fighter pilots, so we got it into our heads that we ought to drive up and give it a shot.”

“Why Canada?”

“Too young for Uncle Sam. We were only nineteen at the time, and the American military didn’t want anybody under the age of twenty-one. Canada’ll take you as soon as you turn eighteen, so a handful of us went up to Ontario to make a go of it.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t take you,” Tom admitted, sounding honestly baffled. Ed felt himself flushing faintly at the praise.

“They would’ve,” he shrugged, “only me and Elmer and Melvin made a pact before we left Norfolk that we were all going in together, or else none of us were. We did a whole week’s worth of training and aptitude tests and exams and what have you, but they drummed Elmer out on account of a heart murmur, so that nixed it for all of us.” He tipped his chin at Tom. “What about you?”

Tom sighed and ducked his head, reaching up to scratch at his eyebrow with a blunt fingernail. He flashed Ed a sheepish look, mouth twisting. “Would you think less of me if I said it was the money?”

“‘Course not,” Ed was quick to assure him, waving the suggestion off as if it were a troublesome fly at a summer barbecue. “I’d be surprised to find a single one of us that ain’t damn grateful to have a little extra scratch lining our pockets. ‘Cept maybe Nixon, but he was loaded before he got here, so he wouldn’t really know to appreciate it.”

Tom snorted and smiled, small but clearly relieved. “It wasn’t _just_ the money, of course. I was planning to join up after I graduated, no matter what—didn’t want to wait around to get drafted—but I can’t say I would’ve volunteered to throw myself out of a moving aircraft without the financial incentive.”

“Sensible of you,” Ed agreed, with as stately a nod as he could manage.

He and Tom glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes. Their gazes caught, and held, until Ed had to slap a palm to his mouth to stifle the sudden, giddy bout of laughter that burbled up through him like a geyser. There was nothing particularly comical about the exchange, but Ed was relieved to see that, next to him, Tom appeared similarly affected. His whole face was flushed, lower lip slowly winning the battle his teeth were waging to keep it in place.

They both broke in the same moment, Ed with his hand splayed over his eyes and his shoulders up around his ears while Tom half-turned away to snort and splutter through his teeth as he tried in vain to hold the hilarity in check. Five minutes later, still breathless, Ed grinned over at Tom, “What are you saving up for?”

“Hm?” Tom asked, wiping at his watering eyes.

“Your money,” Ed clarified. “What are you saving it for?” He hesitated and then amended, _“Are_ you saving it?”

“Yeah,” Tom was quick to confirm. “Yeah, I am. I, uh - ” He paused and licked his lips. Ed got the distinct impression that if he hadn’t already been flushed ruddy from an unexpected fit of the giggles, he might have gone pink out to his ears. “I want to go to law school.”

Ed felt his eyebrows jump. “Law school,” he echoed.

Tom nodded, ducking his gaze toward the ground.

“Wow,” Ed said. It was an underwhelming response, he knew, but he didn’t trust himself to say much more. There was something bright and hot stewing in his belly, like admiration but sweeter and richer, and Ed was sure that if he opened his mouth it was all going to come pouring out of him. When the silence had stretched on just long enough to be awkward, Ed managed to wrest his emotions back under enough control to ask clumsily, “You already have a degree, right?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “In Literature.”

“Why do you want to study law?”

Tom was quiet for a long, thoughtful moment. “I love our country,” he offered eventually, slow and careful. “America—she’s beautiful, but she’s not always fair. There are a lot of people back home who could use an advocate in those moments when she’s not on their side. I’d like to be that for them.” He didn’t look at Ed when he spoke, but there was a steely spark in his gaze, a firmness to the set of his jaw, that belied his dedication.

Ed swallowed, mouth gone dry. “That’s - ” he croaked, and paused to clear his throat. “That’s really good of you, y’know? Admirable.”

“Yeah?” Tom flashed him a shy, hopeful smile.

“Yeah,” Ed nodded, and stepped in near enough that their wrists brushed. It was only for a second, but Ed’s whole body hummed with the contact, bright and fizzy and electric. There was something similar hanging on the air—the tingling weight of promise, swelling all around them.

Ed looked over at Tom and Tom looked back. Ed wasn’t sure when they’d stopped walking, or why they were standing quite so close. The world had grown soft and silent and still. Ed flexed his fingers against the sudden desire to reach out and fist his hand in the warm wool of Tom’s jacket, and shivered when their knuckles brushed, feather light and unexpected. 

He watched the line of Tom’s shoulders rise and tighten as his breath hitched. His eyes were wide, ocean dark and burnished on one side with that lovely copper bloom, mouth open just far enough to show a thin, ridged sliver of his teeth past his pink lips. It occurred to Ed how simple it would be to lean in and just -

 _Oh,_ Ed thought, and then the cacophonous tremolo of nearby thunder splintered the air and the moment was gone as quickly as it had come.

“Shit,” Tom said, leaning his head back just in time for a huge drop of rain to splat directly onto his forehead. He blinked at Ed, mouth dropped open and brow furrowed with affront, while water slalomed down the gentle slope of his nose.

Ed stared at him for a long second, rain falling all around them in slow, scattered drops that beat out a soft _‘pok’_ where they flattened against the soft-packed dirt. Another drop slapped against Tom’s cheek, and then yet another bled a slanted spot onto the shoulder of his jacket, so dark it was nearly black. Ed felt something sharp and cold at the crown of his head, against the back of his neck, and he barked a laugh.

Tom licked his lips, face softening and grin curling. He laughed too, low and lyrical, and before Ed could so much as gather a breath, the two of them were hooting and howling while they sprinted down the road, rain pelting down all around them.

* * *

“What about this?”

Ed lifted his head and glanced across the low table, which was laden from end to end with gently used castoffs, to where Tom had picked a small, gilt-edged dish with a mirrored bottom out of the endless sea of bric-a-brac. He hummed and wrinkled his nose, screwing his mouth up on one side. “What is it?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. Thought she could use it for her jewelry, maybe.”

“Simmie doesn’t really wear jewelry,” Ed said, so gently it almost sounded like he was apologizing.

Tom just nodded, unbothered, and set the dish back down.

They were still a little damp from their impromptu shower, though the proprietor of _La Boîte à Mémoire_ —a steely-haired woman with a pleasant, heavily lined face—had been kind enough to supply them each with a towel, thus sparing them the humiliation of huddling on her doorstep and waiting to enter until they’d sufficiently drip-dried. The secondhand shop was small and cozy and stuffed to the gills with all manner of miscellaneous wares.

With Tom’s help and not a little patience, Ed had managed to secure a sumptuous and gaily patterned silk scarf for his mother, a very handsome pen knife for his brother, and a wooden hair brush with mother-of-pearl flowers inlaid all along the back for his youngest sister, but Simone, the elder of the two, was proving difficult.

“Does she have any hobbies?” Tom asked.

“She keeps a garden,” Ed shrugged. “And she knits.”

“Skeins of yarn are a little difficult to come by at the moment,” Tom sighed. He perked up, so sudden and comical that Ed knew he must be having one on at Ed’s expense, and offered, “Maybe we can find her a trowel. Or!” He lifted a wooden trinket box out from the spread. “Take this outside, fill it with dirt! Gen-u-ine French soil.”

Ed rolled his eyes and snuck a quick glance to the front of the shop. The proprietor was humming to herself behind the counter and sorting through a box of baubles, each of which she subjected to a moment of intense study and then tagged with an appropriate price based on some secret algorithm only she knew and understood. 

Careful not to move so fast as to draw her attention, Ed picked up a small, floppy, stuffed rabbit and threw it directly at Tom’s face, grumbling, “You’re a real gas, you know that?”

Tom laughed and batted it away. “Come on, Ed,” he pressed, leaning down to pick the little rabbit up off the floor and lay it back out on the table amongst all the other sundries. “There’s got to be _something_ she likes that isn’t halfway to a household chore.”

“I don’t know,” Ed sighed. “She sings. She bakes. She listens to all those mystery programs on the radio. Mercury Theatre, Suspense. That sort of thing.” He thought for a second, picturing his sister as he’d seen her just before he shipped out, tucked into the bend of an arm on the old laurel oak in the backyard with her mane of black curls tumbling down her shoulder and her nose buried in a volume of boys’ adventure fiction. “She likes to read.”

“Well, there you go!” Tom announced, excited. “A mystery novel!”

It was a good idea, and Ed said as much. There was only one problem. 

“Have you seen any books in here?” he asked, glancing back toward the front of the shop, which was a hodge-podge of toys, housewares, storage, furniture, and other assorted lifestyle accessories, with not so much as a children’s board book to be found among them.

“No, but there have to be a few,” Tom said, with a wide-armed gesture to the space around him. “I mean, look at this place.”

“You really want to spend another hour trying to hunt down an old Nancy Drew in all this mess?” Ed asked, arching a disbelieving eyebrow. He was well aware that an afternoon wandering through French thrift and antique shops wasn’t the sort of exciting overseas adventure most American soldiers were looking to have in their severely limited free time. Hell, he was surprised Tom hadn’t skipped on to the pub already.

“I love old books,” Tom said, waving off Ed’s concern. “Got a degree in literature, remember?” He nodded toward the proprietor and added, “But I think we can make better time if we enlist some expert aid.”

“Oh yeah? And how exactly do you figure we oughta do that, smart guy?”

During their initial acquaintance, it had become abundantly clear that the proprietor spoke barely a lick of English. Ed couldn’t throw any stones on that front, as his pitiful French lexicon consisted of all four cardinal directions, ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘sorry,’ and how to ask for another pint, but neither did he see a workable solution to the problem.

“Never underestimate the human capacity for communication,” Tom advised, circling around the table to clap a hand to Ed’s shoulder before he strode up to the counter. Ed followed, mouth curling in anticipation of the spectacle that was surely about to ensue.

“Um, pardon? Madame?” Tom said, as he drew near.

The proprietor looked up and smiled at him, wide and white in her matronly face. “Oui, jeune homme? Comment puis-je t'aider?”

“We were hoping - ”

The proprietor cut him off with an apologetic grimace. “Ah,” she said, in her low, husky voice, “désolé.” She pinched her thumb and index finger together, so there was only a tiny fraction of space between them, and said, “I ‘ave, uh - very small English,” in an accent slathered on so thick that Ed almost couldn’t understand her through it.

“That’s fine!” Tom assured her. “Er, c’est bon. Jay - uh - Je connais un peu Français.”

Ed gathered from the way the woman’s eyebrows arched that Tom hadn’t gotten it quite right, but it must have been close enough, because she smiled under her wide eyes and said, “Oh, oui! C’est super. Que recherchez-vous les garçons?”

“Noose, uh - nous volons leave,” Tom said. The woman shook her head at him, smile dimming somewhat under the weight of her confusion, and Tom frowned. “Y’know, leave?” He put his hands together and mimed opening them like you would a book. “Leave?” he asked again, a faint thread of hysteria creeping into his tone. “Pour lire?”

She narrowed her eyes at him and said hesitantly, “Livres?

“Oui!” Tom nodded, face brightening. “Oui, livres. Nous volons livres. Pour - um - pour prix?” 

The woman’s smile beamed back to life. “Oui, oui, j’ai de livres,” she said, picking her way out from behind the counter. She beckoned to them and slipped between a couple of shelves that were piled staggeringly high with all manner of knick-knacks and unexpected treasures. “Par ici, messieurs. Ils sont à l'arrière.”

“Where is she taking us?” Ed muttered, even as he and Tom fell in step a few feet behind her.

“I’m pretty sure she said they keep the books in the back,” Tom said slowly. Ed huffed a laugh and shook his head.

Sure enough, the proprietor guided them through a maze of overflowing displays to a little nook that had been carved out in one of the rear corners. There were a couple of well-loved wingback chairs leaking stuffing onto the dark wood flooring with a dusty old lamp with a pink glass shade bleeding dim gold light on an end table between them, all of it ringed with shelves upon shelves of books in varying states of wear.

“Les voici!” the proprietor said, extending a hand toward the nearest shelf. She smiled at Tom and added, “Faites-moi savoir si je peux vous aider avec autre chose, d’accord?” before disappearing back the way they’d come.

“What was that?” Ed asked.

Tom, who was staring slowly around at the shelves full of books like they were some sort of marvel, replied absently, “What?”

“What’d she say?”

“Oh,” Tom blinked, coming back to himself for a second. “Um, something about coming to find her if we need more help, I think.”

“Right, well - ” Ed started, but Tom was lost again, drifting forward to run his fingers gingerly along the spines of a nearby row, eyes wide and reverential. 

Ed bit back a smile and stepped in to get his own look. It became quickly apparent that there was another hurdle they were going to have to overcome.

“Hey, Tom?”

Tom, who had plucked a slim, dark blue volume from the shelf and was lazily flipping through it, hummed and glanced over, one eyebrow quirked expectantly. Ed picked one of the books up—a hardback in soft, sage green with the title, _‘À la recherche du temps perdu,’_ stamped across the front in gold, which had been tucked into a long line of others the same color and shape—and said, “All these books are in French.”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed, slow and sheepish, half his mind still clearly on the volume he had in hand. “I didn’t really think about that.”

Ed snorted and slipped the volume back into its proper place, sidling up beside Tom and peering over his shoulder to see what it was that had him so enraptured.

“Poetry?” he asked.

Tom nodded and flipped a page. “Shakespeare. The sonnets.”

“I didn’t know he wrote actual poetry,” Ed admitted, gazing down at the neatly stacked rows of verse. “Thought it was all just plays.”

“The plays are his best known works,” Tom agreed. He cut Ed a quick, sweet glance out of the corner of eyes and admitted in a softer voice, “I’ve always been partial to the sonnets, myself.”

Ed smiled at him and leaned against his shoulder, quick and companionable. “Which one’s your favorite?”

Tom considered him for a moment, some inscrutable heat banked at the back of his gaze, and then flipped back several pages. “This one,” he said, nodding to a tidy column with two X’s at the top. “Sonnet 20.”

Ed skimmed the first two lines— _Un visage de femme peint de la main de la nature; Voilà ce que tu as, maître et maîtresse de ma passion_ —and shook his head. “Can you actually read this?”

“Not much,” Tom confessed, with a wry smirk. “My French is fairly basic.”

“Good enough to get us here,” Ed said. Tom smiled at him, small and grateful, and Ed cleared his throat and continued, “So, why Sonnet 20 instead of - I don’t know, 15? Or 12?”

“Well,” Tom sighed, carefully folding the book closed and reaching up to thumb at his eyebrow, “I guess because - ” He stopped, mouth pressed into a thin, thoughtful line, and then swallowed and said, “I had a - a friend, back home. We met during my first year of university and he introduced me to it. I guess it reminds me of him.”

There was a strange, icy hollow in the pit of Ed’s belly. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it was uncomfortable, tender like a fresh bruise. He did his best to ignore it, asking as gently as he was capable of, “Did something happen to him, or -

“No, no,” Tom interrupted, shaking his head. He huffed a soft, chagrined laugh. “He’s fine. Or, he was the last time we spoke.” He lapsed back into contemplative silence, drumming his fingers against the cover of the book in an arrhythmic tattoo. He bit his lip, turning to face Ed properly, and confessed, “He didn’t want me to enlist.”

“What?” Ed scoffed, awash with protective indignation. _If you hadn’t enlisted,_ he wanted to say, _you wouldn’t be here right now. If you hadn’t enlisted, I never would have met you._ What he actually said was, “Why the hell not?”

“He, um - ” Tom was chewing on his lip so badly by now that Ed started to worry he was going to split it. “He thought - ” Tom laughed again, still soft, but small and bitter, and shook his head. His knuckles were white where he had his hands wrapped around the book and his posture had gone tight and tense in a way it hadn’t been in Ed’s company since that very first day in the barracks.

Ed realised, with a sick, distant wash of horror, that this was what Tom looked like when he was afraid.

“Hey,” he said gently, reaching out to curl his fingers over Tom’s where they were clenching desperately at the book before he could think better of it. “You don’t have to tell me, all right? Whatever it is - you _can_ tell me, if you want. But you don’t have to.”

Tom heaved a slow, shivery sigh, licked his lips, and breathed, “I know. I - I want to tell you, I just - ” He shook his head again, chin ducked so he didn’t have to meet Ed’s eye.

For once in his life, Ed kept his mouth shut. He’d always had a bit of a temper—“You run hot,” his mother had said when he was young, “just like your daddy.”—but Tom didn’t need Ed to rant and rail on his behalf, so he held his tongue and brushed his thumb across Tom’s knuckles in slow, soothing sweeps instead. It was the same rhythm his mother had used to stroke his hair back from his temple when he’d had nightmares as a boy, and it seemed to settle Tom the same way now as it had settled Ed back then.

He took another breath, this one swifter and surer, raised his burnished sea storm eyes to meet Ed’s, and said, “I’m queer.”

The words seemed to ring in the air, despite having been delivered at a perfectly reasonable volume, in Tom’s quiet, crisp-edged tenor. It took Ed a second to realize that the whitewater roar rushing underneath the tolling confession was his own pulse, racing too fast to catch.

His hand was still cupped possessively over Tom’s, thumb still swinging in those same slow strokes. It was probably good that he hadn’t let go, he considered, given how Tom was staring at him, eyes wide and wary, with a queasy grey undertone seeping into his pale face. It occurred to Ed that he was taking too long to respond, so he sucked a shallow breath, gave a jerky nod, and mustered the wherewithal to croak, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Tom echoed, question tilting high and hopeful at the end.

Ed nodded again. “Yeah.” And then, just for clarity’s sake, he said for the second time, “Okay.”

Tom’s smile was luminous. “Okay,” he laughed, eyes sparkling, and even in the dingy gloom of this quaint little reading nook he seemed suddenly lit from within. The line of his spine went liquid with relief, shoulders dropping, like something hard and cold inside of him had melted away.

“It’s not a secret,” Tom said. He took one of his hands off the book, careful not to dislodge Ed’s own where it was curled over top of his remaining hand, and wrapped his fingers loosely around Ed’s wrist in turn. “I’m not ashamed of it. My parents know, and my brother. Most of my friends.”

“The guy,” Ed said, understanding striking him like a bolt out of the blue. “The one you were talking about before. He was your - ” His voice failed him, so he tried again, “You and - and him - ”

“Yes,” Tom said, blessedly sparing Ed from having to verbalise any sort of conclusion.

“Is that why he didn’t want you to enlist?”

“Yes and no,” Tom demurred. “It was - he didn’t want me to have to hide, again. _He_ didn’t want to have to hide. We were - back home, people knew about us, and it was mostly all right, but here - ” He shrugged, a small, helpless lift of his shoulders, and then set his jaw and said sternly, “I told him I didn’t care if I had to hide. I couldn’t sit there and do nothing, wait around and hope not to get drafted. Not when so many of my friends and neighbors were already over here doing their part. He didn’t understand that. Used to tell me the military didn’t want us, so why should we bother?” He shook his head. “I didn’t know how to explain it to him.”

“Yeah,” Ed said, because he thought he understood well enough. Maybe not every nuance and particular, but he felt like he had a pretty good grasp on the bull-headed desire to do your duty to your country despite knowing for a fact that at least a fraction of the very thing you wanted so badly to be a part of hated you for something beyond your control.

He thought about the fire in Tom’s voice, about the man he’d apparently left behind, and that strange, frozen hole that had been gnawing its way through his gut flared hot and melted shut.

“You know what?” He waited until Tom was looking at him, eyebrows raised, before he tipped his chin up and declared, “Fuck him.”

Tom’s eyes went wide, mouth curling with glee. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ed nodded once, decisive. “Fuck him. Guy like that probably wouldn’t last ten minutes in basic, and here you are leading a platoon in one of the most elite units the Army’s got on offer. The hell does he know?”

Tom ducked his head, pursing his lips against a smile even as the pink flaring steadily in his cheeks gave away his embarrassed pleasure.

“Anyway,” Ed continued, voice hoarse, “it’s like you said, right? Plenty of other chances for love here in the ETO.”

“Right,” Tom said, fingers tightening ever so slightly where they were yet wrapped around Ed’s wrist.

They were standing very close, Ed noted, with some small amount of surprise. He wasn’t sure which one of them had stepped in, or whether it had been the both of them inching gradually nearer as they spoke, but he could feel the heat of Tom’s breath against his chin when he tilted his head up.

“Thank you,” Tom said, stirring a warm current along the blade of Ed’s jaw. His voice was rough-edged and very quiet, just a rung or two above a whisper.

“What for?” Ed asked in a low murmur. As if of its own volition, his gaze jumped from Tom’s eyes—narrowed with delight and soft with something that made Ed’s belly twist, warm and sweet—down to his mouth.

“Understanding,” Tom breathed, barely loud enough to hear, and then they were kissing.

For all his not inconsiderable skill with maps, Ed would have been hard-pressed to explain precisely how they had gotten from point A to point B, though he couldn’t fault their final destination.

Tom’s mouth was soft and warm, his lips slightly chapped. This close, he smelled sweet and citric—likely whatever Brylcreem was left in his hair after their exposure to the unexpected downpour—with a faint, woodsy musk that must have been cologne. Something about the combination sparked a bright point of heat just behind Ed’s navel.

He didn’t try for anything fancy, just let his mouth rest against Tom’s while the moment unspooled around them in thick, sticky ribbons like sorghum syrup. Ed could feel his heart hammering against his sternum, loud enough that he was sure Tom must be able to hear it. He was starting to get dizzy from holding his breath when Tom sighed a short puff through his nose, made this soft, unbearably sweet sound in the back of his throat, and moved his mouth, just a little. Just enough for a tiny spot of wet heat at the center of his lower lip to catch against the dry bow of Ed’s upper lip.

A pulse of desire throbbed from Ed’s belly out to his fingertips, rolling like ripples on a pond. He turned his head and broke the kiss with a groan, though he didn’t go far. Tom still had one hand wrapped around his wrist, and at some point Ed had brought his free hand up to fist around the lapel of Tom’s jacket and hold him in place. They stood there, half-entwined with their foreheads touching, breathing each other’s air in shallow, desperate gasps, for a few long, silent minutes, interrupted only by the distant, off-tempo ticking of at least four separate clocks.

“I - I’ve never done that before,” Ed breathed, when he felt like he could speak again. He couldn’t look Tom in the eye from his current vantage point, but he found that it didn’t matter so much when he had the man held close enough to him to cause a scandal.

Tom, it seemed, didn’t agree with this sentiment, because he pulled back far enough to get a good look at Ed’s face. He blinked and swallowed, voice thick and just this side of hoarse when he asked, “Did you like it?”

He was so lovely it almost hurt, flushed and shy with his hair falling in loose, soft waves over his forehead. Ed dragged his thumb across Tom’s knuckles where their hands were yet tangled on the book of sonnets caught between their bodies and nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”

“You _think?”_ Tom parroted, fear looming at the edges of his tone like a thunderhead rolling in over the horizon.

Ed nodded once more, tilting his face so their noses brush, and grinned, “Probably oughta try it again. Y’know. Just to be sure.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch, sometimes,” Tom laughed, low and relieved, fingers tightening where they were curled over Ed's pulse. “You know that?”

Ed hummed his agreement and leaned in to kiss him again, savoring the gentle thud as the book fell to the floor, forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
